Microsoft Copilot training for teams

What does the Copilot training cover?

In Dave Willemstein's Copilot training, a team practises with three to five recognisable tasks per role from their own work, in Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Participants learn to give good instructions, choose between Copilot in an app and Copilot Chat, check outcomes, and recognise which tasks and data don't belong with Copilot. The training is bespoke, delivered in-company, and priced as a fixed fee agreed in the intake and confirmed in writing beforehand.

A Copilot training with me isn’t a guided tour of every button. People find those themselves. It’s about which of your team’s tasks get faster or better with Copilot, and how you check the result before you use it. That’s why I work with three to five recognisable tasks per role, drawn from your own work.

Participants learn to:

• Give good instructions: supply goal, context, source and the format you want, and probe further rather than starting again.
• Choose the right place: when to use Copilot inside an app, and when to use Copilot Chat.
• Check the output: follow up sources, re-check figures, and recognise when a summary leaves something out.
• Know the limits: which tasks are better kept away from Copilot, and which data shouldn’t go anywhere near it.

Microsoft has since renamed the product: Microsoft 365 Copilot is now Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now Microsoft Copilot Chat (as of September 2026). You’ll still see the old names in licences and on-screen in places. For an overview of what Copilot is and which variants exist, see “Microsoft Copilot for business” in the knowledge base.

What does the Copilot training programme look like?

The Copilot training is bespoke, and a programme might look like intake, preparation, session and applying it. In that example, the intake covers the goal, audience, licences and internal agreements, and the preparation turns three to five tasks per role into exercises. The duration and content of the Copilot training depend on the group and the goal.

Does working safely with company data feature in the Copilot training?

Yes. The Copilot training translates what Microsoft states about data, privacy and security into behaviour: what is and isn't shared, how to recognise an answer that leans on the wrong source, and what to do if Copilot surfaces something the user wasn't meant to see.

Can the Copilot training be combined with an AI literacy training?

Yes. The Copilot training and an AI literacy training combine well. The groundwork for working safely with Copilot, understanding how AI works and where the risks sit, is also what an AI literacy training covers.

Source: Dave Willemstein, independent AI consultant. Updated: October 2026.

Uses across Microsoft 365

What Copilot can do depends on your licence. According to Microsoft’s licensing explainer and its explanation of Copilot Chat with and without a licence (as of September 2026), the difference mainly comes down to this:

	Copilot Chat (included)	Microsoft Copilot (paid licence)
Availability	At no extra cost with a suitable Microsoft 365 plan	Add-on on top of a suitable plan
Working with web information	Yes	Yes
Working with your own mail, files, chats and meetings	Limited: files you add yourself; in Outlook also your mail, calendar and meetings	Yes, within your own access rights
Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint	Depends on your plan: standard access or not available	Full functionality, with priority
Advanced agents such as Researcher and Analyst	No; simple agents based on instructions and public websites are available	Yes

In its overview of Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft lists these capabilities per app, among others (as of September 2026). In a training, we translate them into your own tasks:

• Outlook: summarise a long email thread, draft a reply, and get tips on clarity and tone.
• Teams: have a meeting summarised and the action points listed.
• Word: produce a first draft based on existing documents, or boil a long piece down to its essentials.
• Excel: analyse data, have formulas and charts suggested, and then check them yourself.
• PowerPoint: build a presentation from an existing document.

Which uses are relevant for your team is something we establish during the intake. A finance team needs different examples than a project organisation.

Working safely with company data

Copilot works with the data a user already has access to. Microsoft states in its explanation of data, privacy and security that Copilot only surfaces organisational data for which a user has at least read access. That’s reassuring, and a risk at the same time: if documents in Teams or SharePoint are shared too widely, Copilot can bring that content to the surface too.

Microsoft also states (as of September 2026):

• prompts, responses and data accessed via Microsoft Graph aren’t used to train the underlying language models;
• for users in the EU, traffic stays within the EU Data Boundary, with the exception of Anthropic’s models, which an administrator can switch on or off;
• sensitivity labels and encryption from Microsoft Purview are respected;
• generated answers aren’t guaranteed to be accurate and need to be checked by the user.

In the training, I translate that into behaviour: what you do and don’t share, how to recognise an answer that leans on the wrong source, and what to do if Copilot surfaces something you weren’t meant to see. The groundwork for that, understanding how AI works and where the risks sit, is also what an AI literacy training covers. The two combine well.

Programme and investment

A Copilot training is bespoke. A programme might look like this, for example:

1. IntakeDiscuss the goal, audience, licences and internal agreements.
2. PreparationGather three to five tasks per role and turn them into exercises.
3. SessionExplanation, practice in your own environment, and agreements on safe use.
4. Applying itParticipants apply it in their work; afterwards, we evaluate what worked.

I deliver the training in-company, at your office, so participants practise with their own account and files. The training is priced as a fixed fee; we agree the amount in the intake and you get it confirmed in writing beforehand. The pricing page explains how I build up prices.

Does part of your organisation work with ChatGPT instead of, or alongside, Copilot? Then ChatGPT training for business is a better fit. Other formats, from a management workshop to coaching, cover the rest of what I offer under AI workshops and training.

Want to know what a Copilot training could do for your team? Get in touch for an initial thirty-minute conversation.